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The People of God and the State in the Bible - a Disestablishing Agenda
It has always struck me as a very strange phenomenon that a church rooted in Scripture can so readily try to offer theological support for an established church. Of course, a large part of the biblical story concerns the fallibility of human nature and the consequent need for appropriate structures to ensure a modicum of reflection of the divine goodness in a fallen world. But one dimension of that is a community which bears witness in its practice and proclamation to the divine perfection of God's kingdom — a goal of, and an environment and criterion for, present action. Such sentiments are not easily pursued when there is the kind of cosy relationship between church and state which we find throughout the history of Anglicanism.
The biblical witness offers testimony enough that those obedient to God should tolerate establishment only with the greatest reluctance and suspicion. In this essay I want to examine the strands of biblical theology which point in that direction in both the Old and New Testaments. I do not want to suggest that the Bible offers an unambiguous message. William Blake's witty aphorism in The Everlasting Gospel, 'Both read the Bible day and night / But thou readst black where I read white', is a reminder to us as we embark on any discussion of 'what the Bible says' on any subject, particularly of a political nature. Blake, of course, believed passionately that at the heart of Christianity lay forgiveness of sins and repudiation of 'religion hid in war' and that too often the Bible had been adopted in the service of oppressive, imperial power. But precisely because of its function as part of a dominant ideology, he recognised the constant necessity for scrutiny of such appropriation, particularly by those who wielded political power.
The Old Testament
God's kingdom plays an important though ambiguous role in the long history of the people of God. Its importance is such that it provided one of the main building bricks for Jesus' proclamation of God's reign, exemplified in acts of power and compassion to the disadvantaged and in riddling challenges to hearers through the parables. The frequent designation of him by his followers as Messiah — the anointed and expected king who would bring peace, prosperity and justice as the prophecy of Isaiah hopes (Isaiah 11) — continued that biblical tradition.
Despite the attachment to David and the dynasty, exemplified in such Psalms as 89 and 132, there is throughout a deep ambivalence towards monarchy. On occasion this can take the form of anti-monarchical sentiments (1 Samuel 8), but these words which come with divine sanction are paralleled with a similar divine approbation of the Davidic dynasty in 2 Samuel 7.14. The activities of that dynasty, whether it be in Judah or Samaria, are a catalogue of misdeed and iniquity which ultimately put the whole dynasty in jeopardy. The story of 2 Kings breaks off with the descendant of David a recipient of a royal dole in the Babylonian court.
The Torah hardly contemplates monarchy with equanimity. Its vision of society is of a community of the elect which, if not exactly egalitarian, works according to a vision of social intercourse in which injustice is corrected, whether through the release of debts (Deuteronomy 15) or the Jubilee (Leviticus 25, though even here the exigencies of the 'real world' demand some kind of dilution of the ideal). Even in Deuteronomy, where the likelihood of kingship does seem to be contemplated (Deuteronomy 17.14ff), it is a grudging acceptance in which the effects of monarchy are duly rehearsed.
The curious thing about the story of the Davidic dynasty, with its central position in the story of God's people, is that in large part it actually serves to point out the inadequacies of that particular structure. Throughout the books of Kings, in particular, we are offered a catalogue of travesties of the divine righteousness. Even beacons of hope such as Hezekiah are shown in less than flattering light. The same is true for those founding figures, David and Solomon, whose heroic deeds and empire-building are viewed with a mixture of admiration and suspicion.
The prophet Samuel's denunciation of the establishment of a monarchy and his continued subversive behaviour with regard to the king who marked the transition to dynastic succession, Saul, indicate the depth of feeling against it. According to the memories of Israel settled in the Promised Land, there was a tradition of charismatic leaders, the Judges. God raised up leaders to meet particular needs, whether administrative or military. In the midst of the stories told about this period, suspicion attached itself to the ambitions of those who would make themselves kings.
Israel's reflection on its God and its politics involved recognition that settlement was a mixed blessing. Not only is there nostalgia for the time before arrival in the Promised Land (Hosea) but also a frank recognition that settlement meant accommodation with a very different culture, the culture of Canaan. The invective against Canaan and idolatry in the Old Testament is testimony enough to the inability of settled life in Israel and Judah to enable the alternative vision of Yahweh, exemplified in a later form in the book of Deuteronomy, to be kept alive.
The fact that Canaanite culture invaded the activity and furniture of the temple is evidence of the pervasive effects of the culture. It stubbornly refused to die, probably because it offered a superficially more adequate expression of the aspirations of a settled people. The rejection of Canaan, however, is in large part a rejection of settlement and an insistence that the alternative Yahwistic horizon in all its awful holiness throws into the sharpest possible relief those arrangements which glibly claim divine support while really reflecting the predilections of the powerful.
Monarchy involved military power and the oppression of the people in the name of expansion, a fact of life in Solomon's reign, ruefully reflected in the law of the king in Deuteronomy 17. It demanded centralisation achieved in the reign of David and Solomon by the creation of a new capital at the Jebusite city of Jerusalem. That centre was given ideological justification when the portable ark was situated there and, under Solomon, a temple built to house it and act as a demonstrable site of God's presence with Israel, subject of a subtle critique by Stephen in Acts 7.
While there is little to suggest that in the early stages priesthood and prophecy were in the patronage of the monarchy, in succeeding generations the canonical prophets criticised the distortions of the understanding of divine righteousness. The outsiders Amos and Jeremiah paid the penalty for their contumacious behaviour in condemning false prophecy and the complacent delusions of grandeur and safety which religion gave to the political establishment in Jerusalem.
The telling of the story of pre-exilic Israel was in large part the result of the experience of the destruction of Solomon's temple and exile to Babylon. Dwellers in Zion began to see that the horizon of judgement which cast a new light on the religio-political settlement of David and Solomon demanded an understanding of God's righteousness. This could not easily be identified with the temple, the king, the priesthood. The all-holy God is presented as one who stands over against the people and their structures, distancing divinity from every human attempt to trap it in idol or cult. The God of the universe had been seen to destroy precisely those institutions believed to be invincible because they seemed to express the divine will concretely, permanently and infallibly.
But even the Exile did not prove sufficient. Within a generation of the return there was a new political settlement. The king may have disappeared, only to fuel hope of an eschatological Messiah, but in his place we find the establishment by imperial decree of a privileged elite to minister in the temple. The ideological buttress of the Davidic dynasty persisted, therefore, even without that dynasty. The priesthood became a focus of political power and the activities of the temple the essence of the life of God's people.
In finding justification for the temple and its sacrificial cultus in the Mosaic traditions, the emerging canon significantly had the effect of relativising that particular political settlement, too. The stories of the portable tabernacle and a utopian vision of a society on the point of entrance into the Promised Land in the pages of Deuteronomy enshrined an alternative horizon in the authoritative writings of the post-exilic community and contrasted starkly with the permanent building replaced after the Exile.
That implicit questioning of the permanence and completeness of post-exilic political arrangements by harking back to an ideal world without temple where Moses the prophet kept alive the alternative vision coincided with the voice of protest against the impoverished response of the post-exilic community. Claims for divine sanction for the building of the temple in the pages of Haggai and Zechariah are matched by the breadth of vision and voice of criticism in the later chapters of Isaiah. Whoever wrote these enigmatic oracles found not a nation purified and pursuing the divine righteousness but demoralised and despondent. Isaiah does not entirely reject the temple, but sees it functioning as an international centre celebrating God's justice (cf. Isaiah 2 and Micah 4). The barbed comments about sacrifice and temple in Isaiah 65-66 and the desperate yearning for a liberation beyond human agency in Isaiah 64 indicate that satisfaction with the temple was not widespread.
Such people were those who kept alive that alternative horizon and who could see in the emerging canon not a justification for the status quo but reason to challenge it and the raw material for other constructs for the behaviour of God's people. The eschatological horizon emerged among such people. They had eyes to see that things were not as they should be. The divine righteousness was far from the land. They could see it because they were not part of the establishment. They were probably castigated as false prophets (Zechariah 13.2) whose eccentric ways proved that no self-respecting Jew should pay much attention to them.
The hope for the Messiah and the coming of a reign of peace and justice (Isaiah 11) was both a protest at present arrangements and a way of offering an alternative horizon to a hegemonic culture. A future hope for a better world encompassing all peoples and the visions which appeared to establish this as divine wisdom were central means of asserting this alternative. Apocalyptic could become the epistemology of protest and subversion, therefore. To assert that what appeared to be the case did not represent God's will was to place all political arrangements under the critical divine gaze. History had to be seen sub specie regni Dei, and those who exercised power were challenged to see that theirs was not the fulfilment of the divine purpose and may (in the eyes of some) have been regarded as a clear departure from it.
The New Testament
It is in the context of such views that we must see the New Testament's views about the exercise of power and the relationship of God's people to contemporary political arrangements. According to Mark's gospel, Jesus of Nazareth preached the reign of God and thus oriented his heaven to that alternative horizon which the eschatological hope had kept alive. Present arrangements were not the norm, therefore. The imminent arrival of the messianic age heralded new priorities and broadened horizons (Luke 4.16, Matthew 11.2ff).
The gospel portraits do not present Jesus as a wide-eyed visionary whose preaching was not matched by practice. In Mark, for example, the paradigm for the Christian gospel, the rejection of the message of the kingdom of God is accompanied by an emphatic distancing of himself from contemporary political arrangements. In Mark 11 the messianic demonstration is followed by action in the temple, which Jesus condemns in words borrowed from the earlier denunciation of the temple by Jeremiah and the breadth of vision of Isaiah of the Exile.
The juxtaposition of action in the temple with the cursing of the barren fig tree indicates the redundancy of an order whose priorities conflict with the kingdom of God. Attempts to turn this into a dichotomy between the religious and the political miss the point that political authority in Jerusalem was in fact wielded by the priestly aristocracy and the Judean ruling class. That the challenge is against this group rather than the Romans merely indicates the locus of political power.
The concluding chapters of the synoptic gospels leave the disciples with little idea of what the messianic reign will be like. They can be in little doubt, however, that followers of the Messiah will want to maintain a critical distance from contemporary institutions.
The gospel of Mark is a sophisticated, narrative form of the Christus Victor theology in which the economic, institutional and spiritual power of the temple is destroyed at the moment of Jesus' death to be replaced by a 'counter-culture' based on service. Conventional ties are loosed and custom is abandoned for a new way (1.40, 2.23ff, 5.25, 7.19).
This 'good news' contrasts with the secular 'evangel' of the imperial propaganda and challenges that dominant ideology. Mark's Jesus challenges a culture of status and customary practice and institutions. In 10.42, the disciples want to sit and rule but are only offered baptism and a cup of suffering. There is to be an alternative perspective in the circle of disciples: learning to be free of dominant ways of looking at the world (4.18, 8.28ff) characterised by the taking up of a cross (8.34 cf. 10.42ff), a rebel's fate.
The gospel is not merely about the propounding of an alternative but also predicts the destruction of the present religio-political order which is intimately linked with the death of Jesus. Within the context of the gospel as a whole, Jesus' death comes at the end of a narrative in which — from chapter 11 onwards — the temple is a dominant theme. Jesus is portrayed as a prophet of doom teaching in the centre of the Jewish empire and attracting a mixed response. The temple is not only of narrowly religious significance, for it is seen as being at the heart of a socio-economic complex of great importance for the Judean area and an ideological system of central importance for most Jews.
From the moment that Jesus enters the temple, it is apparent from Mark that the cursing of the fig tree, which sandwiches the so-called 'cleansing', comments thereby on the bankruptcy of that institution, suggesting that its fate will be that of the cursed tree. But elsewhere in 13.28 the fig tree is used as a sign of imminent change. The destruction of the temple may also be the moment of the growth of something new in the 'counter-culture' proposed by Jesus.
The text which has become the bedrock of discussions of the church and politics is Mark 12.13-17. No passage has been subject to more detailed scrutiny than the discussion of the tribute money, and yet it can hardly bear the weight of a political theology. The context of the saying is one in which Jesus is being put to the test by his opponents. This is especially clear in the introduction to Luke's version: 'so they watched Jesus and sent spies who pretended to be honest, in order to trap him by what he said, so as to hand him over to the jurisdiction and authority of the governor' (Luke 20.20, cf. 23.2). In such a situation, Jesus is portrayed as giving an ambiguous ruling — one that would have associated him with neither the Jewish freedom fighters who rejected Roman power nor those collaborators who had come to some accommodation with the occupying force.
Jesus' response may indicate at most that participants in the Roman economic system, based as it was on slavery and conquest, were bound to pay the tax. But those who recognised the supremacy of God over the universe maintained their distance from Rome and its exploitative and idolatrous practices (a theme explored in the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation). Put in a tight corner by his opponents, Jesus offers not a definitive ruling on relations between his followers and the state but a clever, enigmatic riposte. It is a politically acute answer with which those who had found themselves in similar spots would readily identify.
The gospels are full of challenges to conventional wisdom about monarchy, as found particularly in the character of the Messiah in Matthew's gospel. Jesus is presented as a humble king (21.5), contrasted with Herod who is no true king of the Jews (2.2). Herod slaughters the innocents (2.16ff) whereas the true king reacts positively to children (18.2, 19.14, 20.31). Those who are pronounced blessed share the characteristics of this humble king (5.3ff) who engaged in acts of compassion and healing which affected crowds rather than leaders (9.36, 14.14, 15.32). Final judgement (25.31ff) is based on response to the Son of Man hidden in the destitute lot of his brethren (cf. 7.21ff, 10.42f) who will be revealed as in some sense identified with 'the least' at the moment of 'apocalypse' on the Last Day. Concern for one's final destiny is a present response to those who, like the earthly Son of Man, have nowhere to lay their heads (8.20).
The gospel of John is misunderstood if the tag 'the spiritual gospel' deceives us into thinking that it is little concerned with the politics of real life. Indeed, this gospel insists that the key movements in Christian existence are highly political acts in which the participants demonstrate their allegiance to a different way of being the people of God. In its treatment of Jesus' confrontation with Pilate, it articulates a rival interpretation of kingship: this king is one who washes his disciples' feet. Jesus' reply to Pilate, 'My kingdom is not of this world', is not a statement about the location of God's kingdom but about the origin of the inspiration for Jesus' view of the kingdom. Its norms are the result of God's spirit and righteousness. It is otherworldly only in the sense that it is wrong to suppose that the definition of kingship and kingdom is to be found in conventional regal persons and practice.
This apparently inward-looking gospel, therefore, turns out to be a witness to an alternative practice matched by an alternative consciousness. By calling for adherence to a king, the authority and pattern for whose kingship is 'not of this world', the followers of Jesus do not fight 'but remain in the world bearing witness to the truth before the rulers of synagogue and empire'. The fourth gospel offers us an example of the way in which kingship is redefined in the New Testament (John 18.33ff). It is not 'of this world', in the sense that its origin and inspiration are not exemplified by the exercise of power by the hierarchy or their Roman allies. (We should put behind us the notion that the New Testament is not concerned with power, only powerlessness; the issue on almost every page is the way that power is exercised.)
Nicodemus and other rulers have to learn that they must make a public, political act which requires them to change sides, leave behind the politics of the national leadership and identify themselves with the one whose baptism meant initiation into a very different perspective on the world. They must share the perspective of the heavenly Son of Man who suffered the opprobrium of the political establishment. The position of the follower is going to be no different from that of the Master (John 15.24ff).
Even in the gospel of Luke — which, together with the Acts of the Apostles, seems to be more positively inclined towards the temple and Jerusalem as well as Roman officials — the alternative horizon is maintained. Like Mark, Luke–Acts rejects the contemporary Jewish settlement, a fact which consistently attracts hostility. The apparently gentle treatment of the Romans should not be construed in too positive a light, however. What we have is the recognition of the supreme overarching presence of Roman power. This had to be accepted in the short term, and the space available to the messianic movement to bring about change compatible with its renunciation of violence exploited to the full. Direct confrontation with Rome was to be avoided wherever possible and the situation of political powerlessness recognised with all the constraints it involved. The alternatives were either futile insurrection or gentle exploitation of opportunities for change.
It is not that God's purposes are fulfilled in the triumph of Rome: there is nothing in the story of Luke–Acts which suggests that Rome and its emperors fulfil any messianic or evangelical purpose. There is, however, a recognition that in the divine economy there is a 'time of the Gentiles' (Luke 21), the reality of which had to be accepted. It was futile to live in a false messianic fantasy which pretended that the triumph of the Gentile nations was merely a bad dream (the prophecy of Daniel was important in this respect).
Familiar passages in Luke's gospel suggest a very different perspective from the world of ancient convention: that of the insignificant Mary who gives birth to the Messiah in obscurity, the women followers and supporters, the Samaritans and the 'prodigals'. All these in different ways 'flesh out' the manifesto which Luke's Jesus offers as good news to the poor in 4.16ff. The reader of the gospel is left in little doubt about the appropriate response to those such as Lazarus.
Yet there are nods in the direction of accommodation and understanding. Zacchaeus does not have to sell all his goods: the reparation of half of what he owns seems to be adequate. The ambiguity is no more evident than in chapter 16, where the utter repudiation of Mammon and the disparagement of Dives sits uneasily with assertions that one has to use the Mammon of unrighteousness in order to be considered worthy of heaven.
Luke orients Christ towards the outcasts and rejects of the world and sets the story of Jesus, an insignificant victim of Roman justice, in the midst of the history of the great and the good of the Graeco-Roman world, using a literary genre which hitherto had largely served the interests of the politically and economically powerful. In his narrative he sets down a story which might hardly merit a record in the annals of the ancient world and in so doing includes a glimpse of those poor and insignificant people who were the primary beneficiaries of the gospel. The mighty people in his church needed to learn humility, service and identification with the poor.
According to Luke, Christianity is in a position of nonconformity to contemporary culture, a characteristic feature of the Christian church in the pre-Constantinian era. We have in Luke–Acts biblical writings whose author is seeking to persuade readers who perhaps too readily entertained the 'philosophy of being at ease with itself'. Another horizon was needed for the more affluent churches of the Pauline mission, too easily preoccupied with their ecclesial concerns.
Such distance from the powers that be and scepticism of unquestioning subservience is to be found even in that passage which has formed the cornerstone of conformity and participation in the establishment: Romans 13. A reading of the passage indicates quite clearly that subservience to the powers is not a matter of unquestioning obedience but is premised on the authorities' concern for the good of the readers. What is offered, therefore, is an ideal pattern which states should implement. It is a message directed to the ruled rather than the rulers, possibly because some of the ruled in the Christian community in Rome were questioning the necessity for — or, indeed, competence of — the state (though that is not to deny the centrality of rulers learning their role within the divine economy ).
The necessity of the 'powers that be' is not in question. It is a mark of the old age which is still very much in force. But the state has to seek the good of its subjects. Such good must be defined by the character of God's goodness (the word elsewhere in Romans refers to that). That is the state's obligation; in so far as it fails to do this, or interprets the good as what serves the interests of the powerful, it undermines the obligation so carefully enunciated in these verses.
Since most political regimes fall short of the goodness of God, at the very least subservience and acquiescence are bound to be heavily qualified. What is more, Paul's expectation of Christ's coming and reign necessarily cast its shadow over the permanence and rightness of any political regime, however enlightened. By virtue of their pursuit of sectional interests, all are marked with the mark of the Beast. A reading of Romans 13 will always need the corrective of Revelation 13 so that accommodation and co-operation can at all times be seen for what they are in the light of the Messiah.
The most uncompromising rejection in the New Testament of state power and accommodation with its culture is to be found in the book of Revelation. Suspicion of this book by the state is well exemplified by the marginal status of the book in Anglicanism. For centuries, the Church of England allowed only small parts of the book of Revelation to be read at morning and evening prayer . In the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, lessons from the Apocalypse are to be read only on certain feasts. (The situation changed later when Revelation — except, significantly, chapters 9, 13 and 17, which include the material about the state — was read in the month of December). In a church which asserts in its formularies that the Scriptures contain everything necessary for salvation, this is a remarkable phenomenon and may be paralleled in the impoverished provision of readings from the Apocalypse in the eucharistic lectionary for the Alternative Service Book. The situation is little better in the Revised Common Lectionary, where readings from Revelation are prescribed ten times over the three years. Of these, five are from Revelation 21-22, four from two passages (1.4-8 and 7.9-17), and one from chapter 5.
What we read in church is a political matter and helps form the Christian consciousness. One can understand why Reformation states, insecure about their own foundations and boundaries and suspicious of Anabaptism and radical politics, might have regarded the subversive potential of Revelation 13 and 17 and the effects on ordinary people as too threatening to contemplate, but that is no reason for endorsing a similar attitude today.
The challenge to the complacent, and the word of encouragement to the hard-pressed, stand side by side in a book which unmasks the reality of power and the fallibility of human benevolence. In many ways it offers one of the most coherent accounts of the church's relationship to the state, and in so doing offers a pungent warning to the kind of cosy accommodation which churches have allowed themselves to slide into. In its stark contrast between the Lamb and the Beast, the Bride, New Jerusalem and Babylon, it juxtaposes the choices facing men and women and reminds followers of the Lamb of the dangers of becoming entangled in a political system based on a completely different set of values.
What is particularly disturbing is the ruthless questioning of the motives of the benevolence of the powerful. The deceit involved is frightening. The remedy is simple: exodus and refusal to join in life as usual, because that is complicity with the culture of Babylon. One must resist, contradict and prophesy against the way the world is ordered. Christian life according to the Apocalypse means becoming an outsider. That is a salutary thought for all those who would promote a close alliance between Christ and Caesar.
The church in the first three centuries grew not because people went out and preached the gospel on street corners. Indeed, there is very little evidence that they did that at all. The first Christian communities do not seem to have seen it as their role to go out and persuade people to become Christians. Rather, worshipping communities were to be distinctive and to some extent apart, given to public demonstrations of their faith in acts of martyrdom. They were known to their neighbours as members of a superstition, a deviation from the norms of accepted behaviour. They were distinctive because Jesus' teachings and way offered perspectives and ways of living that were new.
The picture we have of early Christianity from the sources is a 'sectarian' picture which sits uncomfortably with all that we hold dear. From the position of discomfort, persecution, oppression and minority status, Christian people found that the Bible resonated with their lives. For all their protestations of loyalty to the emperor, they refused to conform to the demands of empire. For them there was another king, Jesus. And they dreamt that to him every knee would bow. There could be no compromise between God and Caesar. Allegiance to the resurrected Christ meant that in any conflict of loyalty, the nation state had to take second place to the pearl of great price which those who confessed Jesus as lord had discovered.
"Would that all God's people were prophets"
A dominant theme throughout the Bible is prophecy, a phenomenon which consists not only of prediction but of social critique, forth-telling as well as foretelling, as Blake reminds us:
Prophets in the modern sense of the word have never existed. Jonah was no prophet, in the modern sense, for his prophecy of Nineveh failed. Every honest man is a prophet; he utters his opinion both of private and public matters. Thus: If you go on So, the result is So. He never says, such a thing shall happen let you do what you will. A Prophet is a Seer, not an Arbitrary Dictator.
The involvement of the prophets in the politics of their day is particularly marked in the pre-canonical prophets such as Samuel and Elijah but is also evident in the case of Isaiah and Amos as well as Jeremiah. They cut isolated figures protesting against the dominant thrust of their nation's life, particularly its idolatry and departure from the norms of social justice as set out in the ancestral traditions. The prophets are in a sense deeply conservative, as any true radical must be, objecting to the modernising of their day with its compromises with the lifestyle and values of the surrounding culture and looking back to the roots of the nation's life in its single-minded commitment to Yahweh and the social morality which that worship entailed. Theirs was the task of raising awareness of the fact that 'the Beast and the Whore rule without control'.
Prophecy as an active part of a nation's life is absent from the New Testament, largely because the church members were on the fringes of the political life of the Roman empire. But John the Baptist and Jesus were both hailed as figures in the tradition of the prophets (Peter's confession in Matthew 16.17f and Matthew 23.26ff), reminding us that both were seen as irritants to those in power. John, according to the Jewish writer Josephus, was suspected of fomenting revolution (Antiquities xviii.116f), and that seems to have been the attitude towards Jesus on the part of the hierarchy in Jerusalem who feared Roman reprisals if Jesus was allowed to go on behaving as he was (John 11.49). Indeed, in Mark's gospel Jesus' action in the temple was the last straw which persuaded the authorities to assassinate him.
Prophecy is no mere ecclesial office offering occasional admonition or pious platitudes. Like Jeremiah, the prophet must utter prophecies over many nations, races, languages and kings (Revelation 10.11, cf. Jeremiah 1.10) and be prepared to pay the price of so doing (Revelation 11.7, cf. Mark 13.9ff). It is not a specialist vocation but one to which the church as a whole is called.
Prophets read the signs of the times, something about which generations of religious people with a comfortable position in society were — and are — ambivalent. This has become an important component of Christian social criticism as a result of formulations such as 'the church has always had the duty of scrutinising the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the gospel' (Gaudium et Spes 4). Bound by habit and conservative as we are, we react uneasily to the prophetic voice raised in protest in the name of Christ at some aspect of our common life. How can one claim to speak the word of God? How is it possible to be sure that inscrutable purposes of God are truly divined in human history? Yet the continuation of that prophetic task is a central part of the life of the church whose role is, like Jeremiah and John of Patmos, to prophesy about many peoples and nations and discern the Beast and the Babylon as the trade which afflicts human lives so inhumanely is carried on (Revelation 18.13).
Eschatology and Establishment
The eschatological hope of God's kingdom on earth which is such a dominant thread in New Testament theology cannot allow any easy accommodation between the church, the community of those called to bear witness to the reign of God, and political powers. While still living in an age which is passing away, the church is bound to have to make choices about the extent of its involvement and participation based on its assessment of the extent to which, in whole and in particular policy, the kingdoms of this world manifest the way of the Messiah.
This is a complicated process in which one might expect significant differences of opinion. But when that wrestling with the issues is carried out in a situation where integration into a political system is a continuing datum, the chances of critical awareness are dramatically diminished and the dangers of being used to baptise social, political and economic systems which are far from reflecting the righteousness of God are increased.
There is a deep-seated biblical view that the present does not represent the demonstration of God's purposes and a hope for something different based in common humanity created in God's image, with a consequent mutual concern. Throughout the Bible, that hope is not merely an ideal but a motivating force, for in their common life the people of God share that vision and, however imperfectly, seek to bring it to fruition.
The contrast between the city of God and the human city has been one of the dominant themes of Christian theology, later taken up by Augustine in his monumental City of God. That contrast has become an excuse for otherworldliness and despair of changing this world and for concentrating on the next. Beside this, however, there has been the view that the city of God is not something solely beyond history but is to be worked for through God's grace as part of the divine economy.
We dare to hope because our hope is rooted in the story we tell of ourselves and our God and the sense we make of our world in the light of it. Yet it is not merely our story we proclaim, nor even the church's, but God's. As we tell it, we hope and pray that God's kingdom will come on earth as it already is in heaven. As we break bread together, we echo the words of the former head of the Jesuit order, Pedro Aruppe, who said that as long as there is anyone in the world who is hungry, our Eucharist is incomplete. Ignoring those needs and explaining faithfulness to Jesus without attention to them or to our hope is to undermine the claim of our worship. We run the risk of leaving Christ knocking outside the door of our churches in the persons of the poor and outcast while imagining that 'the Lord is here'.
It is because of Jesus that we hope for something different and dare to warn of the effects of ignoring God's justice. It is because of our hope that we look to our own practice and seek at every opportunity to embody the promptings of the eschatological spirit in words and deeds. These must mirror that time when sorrow and sighing will flee away and each human will be recognised, equally stamped with the name of our God, and we shall see God face to face (Revelation 7.15f and 22.4f).
The politics of relationship and structure require distance from the political process and not intimate involvement with it. This is not to advocate opting out of politics; that would be impossible in any case. Rather, it means attending to that which has enabled the prophets to speak: distance, marginality, faithfulness to the traditions of Scripture and the saints.
Of course there have been court prophets such as Nathan who have heard and proclaimed the hard words at the appropriate time (2 Samuel 12). The problem is the ease with which the prophets lose the perspective of Sinai and the Wilderness and end up encouraging their hearers to be at ease in Zion. All of us know how tempting it is to buoy people up with false hope, to give voice to our own fancies and to proclaim that no harm will come (Jeremiah 23.16). The prophet has to stand trembling in the council of the LORD and proclaim the words of God to people.
Close involvement in the political realm as part of the establishment makes the vocation of bearing witness to the dawning reign of God at best difficult and at worst impossible. For example, the demands of the state can readily brush a vocation which is at the heart of the gospel story: the nonviolent way of the Christian Messiah. Since states are, in the last resort, always going to retain by force the power and influence of those whose interests they serve, the church is inevitably going to have to compromise over the issue of violence. This is something about which William Blake constantly reproached the church of his day when he accused it of promoting 'religion hid in war'.
Pacifism has not had a strong tradition within the churches, not least the Church of England, where Anabaptist tendencies are roundly condemned in Article 37. Disestablishment of the church is no panacea in this respect. Indeed, there will be many supporters of the cause of disestablishment who are not pacifists. Nevertheless, it does bring a greater critical distance from the processes of government and would put the church in a better position to examine the theological assumptions which have supported its alliance with military power and explore the propriety of exercising another form of power rooted in the, to Anglicans, unfamiliar tradition of nonviolence. Christians, who claim to be living between the ages and who walk by faith and not by sight, should be particularly keen to stress the appropriateness of the way of nonviolence precisely because of its witness to the gospel of love and its recognition of human fallibility.
When Jesus asks 'who made me Lord over you', he enunciates a question which should echo in the ears of all those who seek to put into practice the messianic way of the cross. It is commitment to that way which demands of Jesus' followers that they take seriously the word: 'It shall not be so among you' (Mark 10.42). Taking that to heart demands renunciation of the privilege and power of establishment and acceptance of the power of that 'more excellent' way which is a more fitting way to bear witness to the dawning reign of God before the principalities and powers now subservient to the risen Christ.
J. Barr, The Bible as a Political Document (1980).
Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (1988).
David Rensberger, Overcoming the World (1988)
O. O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations (Cambridge, 1995).
F. E. Brightman, The English Rite, Vol. I (London, 1915), p. 51.
K. Wengst, Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ (London, 1988)
Alan Kreider, Worship and Evangelism in Pre-Christendom (Nottingham, Grove Booklets, 1995).
Annotations to Watson's Apology in Blake, ed. Keynes, p. 392. Blake quotes Numbers 11.29 in the Preface to Milton in Copies A and B, where we also find the poem commonly known as 'Jerusalem'.
R. Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge, 1995).
On false prophecy see O'Donovan, op.cit., especially pp. 62ff and p. 11. 'God has no spies. He has prophets, and he commissions them to speak about society in words which rebuke the inauthentic speech of false prophets. But true prophets cannot speak only of the errors of false prophets. Their judgement consists precisely in what they have to say to God's purposes of renewal ... .'
(c) Christopher Rowland is the Dean Ireland Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford. He is co-author of The Bible foor Sinners - http://tinyurl.com/654rlc
This essay was first published in Setting the Church of England Free: The case for disestablishment, edited by Kenneth Leech and published by the Jubilee Group.


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WISC Editorial Agenda 2013
Helps us plan for the year ahead.
The WISC Editorial Board held its annual retreat this week to talk about our editorial agenda for the coming year. Tom Bier, Nan Roach, Jill Sommers, Glenn Krieg, Steve Scadden, Brennan Nardi, Colin Benedict Jeff Ver Voort and I spent some time with Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance president Todd Berry, Thrive president Paul Jadin, Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce president Zach Brandon and incoming state Assembly Speaker Robin Voss and Congressman-to-be Mark Pocan and we talked about taxes and jobs and schools and economic development and, yes, politics. We got some good ideas. But as always we'd also like to hear from you.
This year we put some special emphasis on race issues, workforce development and kids' issues among others. We'd like your thoughts on what we should give special focus to this year. Send me an email and let us know. We'll give you our final agenda in a couple of weeks.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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text:
Download this coloring page upon purchase to print and color as many times as you please. The PDF is not colored, signed or watermarked. It is made to fit an 8.5×11-inch page with 1/2-inch margins. It can also be printed on A4 paper. The final printed page looks very crisp, with no blurs, blemishes or unwanted lines.
Print using a laser printer to prevent smudging when coloring, especially if you'll be using ink, markers or paint rather than crayons or colored pencils. You may want to print on card stock rather than plain paper to prevent your pigments warping or bleeding through your page.
Please don't sell the PDF files you buy from Candy Hippie and do not sell printed copies, or use the image(s) for any commercial use. You are welcome to give printed copies of this image unaltered as gifts, but the artist requires that you please do not give away copies of the file itself. Thank you for understanding! :)
This Turkey Time mandala coloring page is also available in the Candy Hippie Etsy shop.


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2012-04-16: Information Station Column
"A great library doesn't have to be big or beautiful. It doesn't have to have the best facilities or the most efficient staff or the most users. A great library provides. It is enmeshed in the life of a community in a way that makes it indispensable. A great library is one nobody notices because it is always there, and always has what people need."
― Vicki Myron, Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World
"A Great Library Provides" and I have been reminded of that again just this week. As librarians, our job is to provide. We provide many things – books, of course, but we also provide programs, internet access, research materials, reference help, technology help like eReaders, meeting rooms, DVD cleaning, we provide book recommendations – the list goes on and on. But our goal is not just to provide lots of things – but to provide services and books that YOU, as our community, want. This is YOUR library – we may work here – but our job is to serve YOU! So I just want to encourage you – stop in, join us online – on our website or Facebook page – tell us what you want. This can be things like book recommendations all the way to programming ideas – we DO want to hear from you – that is what makes our library strong and makes it what you want – remember, it is YOUR library!
Book Review:
When I first started reading the prologue for this book, The Grace Effect, I thought, "I am going to give this one to my husband – I think it's too deep for me!" But as I got into Chapter 1, I knew I was going to LOVE this book and I didn't put it down (well almost anyway) until I was DONE! It is an exceptional book – it is, at it's core, a wonderful adoption story – the author, Larry Alex Taunton's, story of travelling to the Ukraine and their roller coaster ride to get their 10 year old daughter, Sasha. But interwoven throughout that story, is the story of Taunton's challenge in life – to get people to see that the world IS a better place with Christianity and Christ – How Grace makes life palatable. Taunton travels the world sharing and debating this truth – how we all need Grace. But woven in Sasha's adoption story, this truth is all the more seen and recognized through the life of this little girl.


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1.Explain how the temperature difference between the poles and the equator drives the motion of the oceans and atmosphere. 2.What are the differences between ice caps and glaciers? 3.How do ocean currents affect local climate? 4.Why do we call groundwater in most areas a "nonrenewable resource"? 5.What is the Gulf Stream? 6.What countries are directly affected by the path of the Gulf Stream? 7.Find out what kind of rock is below the soil in your town. How did you find out this information? 8.Give an example of an ecosystem near your home. Describe how energy flows through this ecosystem. 9.How many different trophic levels were represented in your last meal? 10.What is the ozone layer? Where is it located? Why is it important to life on Earth? 11.What steps would have to be taken to reduce the severity of the greenhouse effect? 12.Where do electric cars obtain their energy? Is it true they do not generate pollution because they have batteries?
Why do we call groundwater in most areas a "nonrenewable resource
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Taliban militants tried to attack a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan Monday, but were thrown back by NATO and Afghan forces, officials said.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force said called the morning attack near a forward operating base in Nangarhar province along the border with Pakistan "an attempted but unsuccessful coordinated attack by enemy forces."
The ISAF said three enemy forces were killed in a gun battle with coalition forces and "no ISAF personnel were killed."
CNN, quoting provincial governor's spokesman Ahmed Zia Abdulzai, said the insurgents detonated explosives near parked NATO supply trucks.
He said Afghan and NATO troops engaged the militants in a firefight that lasted about two hours. There were no civilian or military casualties, but some supply trucks were set ablaze.
The BBC said some of the NATO supply vehicles were badly burned and the Jalalabad-Torkham road, used by the vehicles, was closed after the attack.
CNN reported Taliban spokesman Zabiulah Mujahid claimed several suicide bombers participated in the attack and several soldiers were killed.
Taliban violence has escalated ahead of the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from Afghanistan, which will be completed by the end of next year.


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This week, freezing temperatures and lots of snow wreacked havoc across Europe, stranding many holiday travelers. But on the other side of the Atlantic, some equally unusual weather has kept parts of Hudson Bay from freezing over, causing the growth in Arctic sea ice to come to a halt. To find out whether these two events might be related, we talked to Mark Serreze, head of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The two weather events are linked by a mass of unusually high pressure air that is sitting over central Greenland, Serreze said. A cyclonic rotation has formed around that high pressure area, and the southward rotation pulls air out of the Arctic and sends it heading towards Europe. Hence, the freezing temperatures.
On the other side of Greenland, the rotation is pulling warmer air out of the south—the normally frigid Baffin Island is experiencing temperatures above freezing, a rarity in December. This has left large areas of Hudson Bay and the Davis Strait, which are normally frozen over, with limited areas of sea ice. The end result is that the trajectory of sea ice growth has taken a sudden dip.
It's very interesting," Serreze said. "It's essentially been flat, maybe it's gone down a little bit." He made it clear that this had been seen before, so it wasn't unprecedented to have a December pause. He also noted that this wasn't an instrument error; although the NSIDC relies on a satellite sensor called SSM/I, other satellites are seeing the same thing. Nevertheless, the change has left us with the lowest ice levels at this date since they've been recorded by satellite.
Serreze said that, in the global sense, this situation is similar to the strong North Atlantic Oscillation event that brought cold temperatures to Europe last winter. And this sort of local weather event mostly redistributes the air, so it doesn't have a huge impact on global temperatures. Europe had already started to cool off in November, and that turned out to be the warmest November on the instrument record.
But Serreze pointed out two ways that the current weather might be connected with long-term trends in the Arctic. The intense high pressure over Greenland is associated with a strong low pressure area a bit northeast of Iceland. That will tend to pull ice out of the Arctic, and may contribute to the ongoing decline of thicker, multi-year ice. The thinner ice that's replacing it is more prone to melting rapidly in the summer.
There's also a chance that the loss of sea ice is feeding back into the system. Serreze said that the research community was beginning to suspect that the lack of sea ice allows the oceans to pump heat into the atmosphere in the Arctic in a way that could impact local weather, including the North Atlantic Oscillation. He described the idea as "very much in its infancy," but said that it's something the community was looking into seriously. If it turns out to be right, the frigid winters Europe has experienced these past two years might become the norm.


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As tipped off yesterday, Fight Night Champion is being offered a la carte over PlayStation Network beginning today—gamers can buy the boxing title's "Champion Mode," the cinematic narrative of fictious boxer Andre Bishop, for $5. If they enjoy that, they can add other game modes on a piecemeal basis.
EA Sports made it official with a news release minutes ago. PS3 customers who buy Champion Mode at $4.99 can then extend their experience to Fight Now (the one-off offline fight mode) for another $5, or Legacy Mode, the create-a-boxer career experience, for $10, which also includes Boxer Share, the ability to upload and download created boxers. Full online play is another $10.
Altogether, it means Fight Night Champion's components cost $30 on PlayStation Network. That's its current retail price through GameStop (around $20 through used-copy sales channels like Glyde and Half.com, where online access is not guaranteed).
For Xbox Live users, the game is available as a full title only, for $29.99. No explanation was given why PlayStation Network could offer individual game modes and Xbox Live could not.
Kotaku reached out to EA Sports for comment, but there is no indication that this kind of a la carte offering is planned for other titles the label publishes.
You can contact Owen Good, the author of this post, at firstname.lastname@example.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.


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Qt Software and KDE e.V. are happy to report that they are sponsoring a developer sprint for all North American students accepted into Google Summer of Code 2009 to work on KDE. The event will be completely free for all accepted students, with round-trip flights, lodging, and some meals fully reimbursed; all students that applied for GSoC 2009 are invited to attend, although those not accepted into the program will have to ask KDE e.V. to be reimbursed for travel and lodging expenses.
The focus of the sprint will be integrating the students into the community, introducing them to each other and to longer-term members of KDE, giving them some quickstart training with Qt and KDE, helping them get their developer environments set up; helping them get started on their projects and hopefully just having a good time.
The location will be Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The exact time is not yet determined (it will take place over a weekend and will depend upon the best-fit dates for the accepted students), but we hope that each and every one of the accepted students will be able to attend, and will try to schedule it as early in the summer as possible.
Accepted students for GSoC 2009 are going to be announced later today: good luck to everyone!
... to all the students who applied and I hope you'll have a great weekend!
Ah, to be a young student again. No cares, no worries, no need to sleep...
Ahh, if only, if only....I need to eat and sleep, I have field work for this class, a paper for that class, I have to integrate a physics library for another class, I should also study for the exam for that one class, I have to find a new job because my old one went under, my family hasn't heard from me in weeks, the list goes on. And to top it all off, because I never get a break from the essential things, "non-essentials" like bonding with the community and refining my proposal were never able to happen (much to my chagrin). So I'm worried sick over here, man! :)
A "status quo" that has me working a flat nine-to-fiver would really give me so much more time to accomplish things in the day. :/


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I, Issac, Take Thee Rebekah: The Will to Do
- Ravi Zacharias
- 2004 10 Feb
I have heard it said that the longest journey in life is from the head to the heart. Others say that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Yet another aphorism of our time is that beginning well is a momentary thing; finishing well is a lifelong thing. All of these point to one reality-our knowledge and our response are not always in keeping with each other. We put asunder what God intended to remain joined together.
Solomon proved this centuries ago. He made a fascinating statement in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He relates all the areas in which he searched for meaning-pleasure, riches, power, fame, and everything else one could imagine. Through all of these forays into a search for fulfillment, he says, "My wisdom stayed with me" (Ecclesiastes 2:9). How is that possible, we ask, when his day-to-day life was a colossal mess? I understand him to mean that in the midst of his duplicity, his theoretical knowledge of right and wrong never left him. He knew how to discern. But he was volitionally weak and unable to resist the tug of attraction into wrong behavior.
I have shared the following story many times over the years. Those from parts of the world to whom this is foreign shake their heads in disbelief, wondering how this can even be theoretically plausible, let alone practically workable. But read the reasoning first and then I will try to explain.
I give you an example of my older brother, who lives in Toronto, Canada. The story dates back to the late 1960s. At that time he was a systems engineer with IBM. Since that time, he has gone on to do several very mentally impressive things in the world of computer software. In other words, he is mentally all right. He doesn't have any major problem as far as his IQ is concerned. I say that because you may begin to wonder as I tell his story.
When he was in his mid-twenties, my brother came to my father and said, "You know, Dad, I've always maintained even when we were in India that I'm only going to marry the girl you choose for me. I guess I am ready now. Would you please begin a search for a girl for me to marry?"
I really didn't believe he'd go through with it. We were living in Toronto, thousands of miles and a cultural planet away from the land of our birth. But this was his choice. He wanted my parents to help in "The Search." My father and mother said, "Fine. Tell us the kind of young woman you're looking for." He gave his "ideal partner" speech and proceeded to describe the kind of person he would choose to marry.
Thus began his quest and what I called our family entertainment hour every night around the table. My father wrote to his sister in India who was doing the ground work, and in response came numerous letters with suggestions, photographs, and information sheets ad nauseam. Oh! The jokes that would fly! The unsolicited advice from every member of the family was profuse.
He narrowed the "applicants" to a short list and, finally focusing on one person, began to correspond with her. Then they advanced to telephone conversations, but not many because that was "too expensive." One could tell that reality was closing in. Finally, believe it or not, they both felt this was it. The dates for the engagement and the marriage were set with these two never having met.
My brother and my father flew from Toronto to Bombay. More than one thousand wedding invitations were sent before my brother and his bride-to-be had ever seen each other. Two days after his arrival was the engagement date and a day or so later was the wedding date. He would then bring his bride back to Canada, all within a week, and they would live "happily ever after." That, at any rate, was the plan.
I thought to myself, Oh my! You know, this is faith. Maybe it is even less than that. This is credulity! I began to get really concerned, so before my brother left for Bombay I mustered up the courage to caution him. I said, "I don't want to challenge anything you're doing, but I do have a brief question. What are you going to do when you arrive in Bombay, come down the Jetway and see a young woman standing there with a garland in her hand, and say to yourself, Good grief! I hope that's not her. I hope that's somebody else! Or she looks at you and thinks to herself, I hope that's not him, I hope that's his brother! What on earth will you do? Are you going to take her aside, talk it over, and then make an announcement saying, 'We have met . . . we will not be proceeding with our plans'? Will you get on the telephone or write letters to everybody and say, 'Folks, we've met. The wedding is off.'"
My brother just stared at me. He said, "Are you through?" I told him that for the moment I was just awaiting his answer. Then he said something that was absolutely defining for him: "Write this down, and don't ever forget it: Love is as much a question of the will as it is of the emotion. And if you will to love somebody, you can."
That statement brought our conversation to a sudden stop. That was thirty-five years ago. My brother and his wife now have three children and make their home in Toronto. Has it been easy? No. Marriage never is easy. But the challenges do not come from the absence of commitment.
The first thing to bear in mind is that we exaggerate the separation of the emotion and the will as two distinct faculties of operation-some kind of misshapen two-headed monster. Think, for example, of the caricature we make of one difference between men and women. We seem to think that women are more emotionally driven and men more cerebrally driven. If that caricature were true, why is it that more men fall into infidelity after marriage than do women? If women are more emotionally driven, should it not be the other way around? I think it more appropriate to say that women in general recognize the emotional ramifications of their acts better than men do. Men do feel emotion, but they do so selectively and fail to face the consequences of reality. Betray a man and you find out that his emotions surge to the top. I believe that a legitimate understanding of what is happening here can preserve the grand union between emotion and will.
Without the will, marriage is a mockery; without emotion it is a drudgery. You need both.
We like the side dealing with emotion, not the will. I have now been married more than thirty years. I often look back at the time when I was on the other side of the marital line and remember how I thought about marriage then. One particular conversation stands out. A year before I was married, I was sitting in a Christian education class when the professor quite dramatically started to philosophize about life. Commenting on the home, he said, "I want you students to know that love is hard work."
I leaned over to my classmate and whispered, "I wouldn't want to be married to anybody who goes around telling everybody how hard it is to love me."
He said, "I agree with you. Why don't you ask him about it?" Like a fool, I did.
I stood up and said, "Excuse me, sir . . . I am not quite comfortable with your categorization of love as 'hard work'."
The professor stared at me, evidently not taking too kindly to my challenge, and demanded, "Zacharias, are you married?"
When I responded, "No, sir," he said, "Then why don't you just be quiet and sit down? You don't have a clue what you are talking about." I sat down.
One year later I was married. After being married all these years, I can unblushingly say, he was right. Love is hard work. I would carry it one step further. It is the hardest work I know of, work from which you are never entitled to take a vacation. You take on burdens and cares. You inherit problems. You have to feel beyond yourself. You have to think of things other than yourself. You are now multiplied in your responsibilities and are trusted with greater commitments.
Chivalry in love has nothing to do with appearance. It has everything to do with the tenderness of a heart determined to serve. That is the first hard lesson to learn. You do not act under the impetus of charm but out of a commitment to make someone's life the joy you want it to be. In the early days of marriage, joy precedes the act. Tragically, as the years go by joy can be severed from the act until finally, the act itself is no more. This ought not to be. Over time it is the companionship that brings joy and service is the natural outworking of the joy of commitment. Failure to act kills it.
But this kind of care does not come easily. Only if it is taken seriously does it become a sheer delight of the heart. I will also add that this kind of care is not seen much in the times in which we live. The reason we have a crisis in our gender relationships is not that we are culturally indoctrinated but that we would rather be served than serve. We would rather be the head than the feet.
The Christian faith stands unique in pointing out that the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. The Son of Man came to serve. This means that the service He gave to humanity was given even when we least merited that sacrifice. There is a joy in service that transcends emotional temporariness.
Excerpt from I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah by Ravi Zacharias. ©W Publishing Group, 2004, Used with Permission
Click here to read a Q&A with Ravi Zacharias.


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DailyINK Featured in Editor & Publisher
In this month's Editor & Publisher, DailyINK is prominently featured in an article entitled "Mobile Apps Are Next Frontier For Syndicates." As mentioned in the article by writer Rob Tornoe, King Features launched its DailyINK app for iPhone more than a year ago and recently added versions for Android and iPad. The app features more than 90 comics strips, panels and editorial cartoons, as well as vintage classics, games and puzzles. The... Read More


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U.S. Rep. Rush Holt — an actual rocket scientists, as his supporters like to tout on bumper stickers — tonight topped the IBM supercomputer Watson in a round of Jeopardy! down in Washington.
Holt — who was a five-time Jeopardy! winner more than 30 years ago and joked midday that Watson was "just a little Atari" when he made his game-show splash — tweeted almost an hour ago about the experience: "I played a full round against @IBMWatson tonight and was proud to hold my own: the final tally was Holt $8,600, Watson $6,200."
Holt was joined in the game by Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, who tweeted that he didn't mind losing to a nuclear physicist and computer that famously defeated some of the TV game show's top champs: "I seriously CANNOT believe that @rushholt beat @ibmwatson," he wrote. Also playing: Reps. Bill Cassidy, Nan Hayworth and Jared Polis.


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The October 2012 security "Critical Patch Update" information and downloads are now available from My Oracle Support (MOS).
See http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html and in particular Document 1475188.1 on My Oracle Support (MOS), http://support.oracle.com, which includes security CVE mappings for Oracle Sun products.
For Solaris 11, Doc 1475188.1 points to the relevant SRUs containing the fixes for each issue. SRU12.4 was released on the CPU date and contains the current cumulative security fixes for the Solaris 11 OS.
For Solaris 10, we take a copy of the Recommended Solaris OS patchset containing the relevant security fixes and rename it as the October CPU patchset on MOS. See link provided from Doc 1475188.1
Doc 1475188.1 also contains references for Firmware, etc., and links to other useful security documentation, including information on Userland/FOSS vulnerabilities and fixes in https://blogs.oracle.com/sunsecurity/


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Home > Back to Search Results > Early and rare title... published for only a few months...
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Early and rare title... published for only a few months...
Item # 633561
July 23, 1666
THE CURRENT INTELLIGENCE, London, July 23, 1666
* Very early title
* The Great Plague
This is a very rare title as it lasted for only 24 issues, ending publication when the Great Fire of London struck in September of 1666. It was founded by famed publisher Henry Muddiman who was involved in several early publications including the first 2 issues of the London Gazette, eventually founding this newspaper as a competitor to it (format was virtually identical) but it never revived after the printing house was destroyed by the Great London Fire.
News reports of the day from various European cities plus an item from Norwich noting that 85 had died the past week from the Plague, plus another 20 at the Pesthouse (see).
A single sheet, 11 by 7 inches, very nice condition.
Category: The 1600's and 1700's


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As amber exudes a soft, sticky tree resin, you will find some containing air pockets, leggy insects or plant extracts. With this in mind, of course I had to meddle with the pure amber nectar colour, and add a dash of colour of my own.
Makes: about 5 – 6 x 245 ml jars
1 honeydew melon, remove the skin, then chop into even sized chunks. Okay to include the seeds
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 kg cooking apples, peeled, roughly chopped, including cores and pips
Optional ½ teaspoon chilli flakes*
Caster sugar
In a large preserving pan, put in the melon and apple pieces with the lemon juice, cover with just enough water. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes until soft. Mash thoroughly to extract as much juice as possible. Strain through a jelly bag or muslin-lined nylon sieve, set over a large bowl. Do not press the fruit or squeeze the bag as this will make the jelly cloudy. Leave until the dripping stops. This may take several hours or even overnight. Next, measure the liquid and return it to the pan along with 450g sugar for each 600 ml (1 pint) of liquid. Stir well over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Add the chilli flakes. Increase the heat and boil rapidly for 10 -15 minutes. Test your jam for a set — setting point is 105C (220F). If necessary, boil for longer and keep testing, until the jelly has reached setting point. Remove the pan from the heat, skim off any scum and allow to cool briefly. Carefully pour into hot, sterilised jars. Seal the jars and allow the jelly to cool completely before labelling and storing.


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Alcombright Lays Out 'Worst Case' Budget Plan
|Mayor Richard Alcombright explains the drop in state aid since 2009.
Update: The complete presentation from Wednesday's meeting is available at the bottom of the story. The meeting was also recorded for airing on NBCTV.
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A worst-case budget scenario for the city could mean the loss of nearly 30 jobs, pay cuts and reduction of services.
The city is facing a $625,000 deficit in fiscal 2015: a revenue proposal would combine job cuts by attrition and increases in water, sewer and parking fees to raise more than $400,000.
Mayor Richard Alcombright laid out a bleak vision of what would happen should that revenue package not pass.
Nearly 15 jobs on the city side would be eliminated; salaried nonunion staff would see a pay cut of 10 percent and City Hall would close on Fridays; staff training and education would be eliminated.
The city would also break its minimum staffing contract with the firefighters' union and services like mowing, sewer repair and snowplowing would be reduced.
The school department would face a similar situation.
"That puts us significantly at risk of losing very good people in the city," said Alcombright.
Worse, he said, "We do all this and I'll be back here next June trying to cut a half-million dollars."
The result would be the same, the mayor said, should a one-time state aid boost of $750,000 proposed by state Sen. Benjamin B.Downing and Rep. Gailanne Cariddi pass the Legislature.
Alcombright reviewed the proposed spending plan, the revenue package he's proposing and the consequences if it doesn't pass with the Finance Committee on Wednesday.
The committee will delve into specific areas with department heads beginning Thursday night at 6:30.
The review for the most part showed the city's fiscal situation has not changed. It's been struggling with the loss of state aid and revenues that aren't keeping up with costs.
The city's been draining its reserves after the failure of a Proposition 2 1/2 override three years ago.
"We're Band-aiding this with reserves, reserves, reserves," he said.
State aid is inching upward - it's about $100,000 more for next year — although committee member Lisa Blackmer noted that number also contains the 75 reimbursement for veterans benefits.
And benefits have risen significantly over the past few years and are expected to be $750,000 next year.
Other details included making the part-time veterans agent assistant full time at the "strong urging" of the Veterans Administration. Her salary, like the agents, is partly offset by charging other towns that they serve.
In response to questions, the mayor said three other salaries are being increased for the posts taking on new responsibilities or being reclassified to reflect duties.
Consolidations have saved about $200,000. Three part-time posts in public works, public service and the health department will not be filled, along with three full-time posts for engineer (being eliminated), cemetery and police officer.
"We're making department heads justify or affirm the need for every position when a vacancy occurs," said the mayor.
Most lines items are being level funded; there are increases in health insurance costs of about 8 percent and overtimes salaries in public safety are up again, in part because two more personnel than expected were out on disability.
At the same time revenues from school tuition have dropped nearly $300,000 as fewer children are coming in from feeder schools.
Several residents suggested raising at fees at municipal lots; getting a consultant to determine if hiring officers would be more cost-effective than overtime; reopening talks with employees on insurance, and rejecting any raises.
Alcombright, however, said more cuts wouldn't ultimately solve the city's financial position. He plans to begin a campaign for an override this fall with a vote in the spring.
The mayor has frequently stated the passage of an override in 2011 would have solved much of the problems by increasing the city's taxing capacity.
He estimated that the bill on an average house (about $138,500) would have gone up $123.
"So instead, we did a sewer fee that raised taxes about $80," he said. "We would have balanced the last three cycles and would have $1 million to $1.3 million in reserves."
Committee member Wayne Wilkinson said it was critical for residents to understand what an override means.
"I think there's a misconception, whether your for it or against," he said.
Prop 2 1/2 limits taxing capacity to 2.5 percent of all assessed property.
Committee Chairwoman Nancy Bullett rejected charges that talk of layoffs and losing critical staff were scare tactics.
"You've got to understand that's as black and white as it gets and it's down to the bare bones," she said. "There isn't anything that hasn't been put out there for the public."
Councilor Joshua Moran said the younger population had a responsibility to ensure the future of the community.
"If we want to die as a city, then we're doing a good job at it," he said. "I think it's very selfish individually that we look at small amounts of money yearly that could cost us our future."
Tags: budget cuts, city budget, Finance Committee, fiscal 2015,


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Bodychecking And The Risk Of Injury In Youth Ice Hockey
April 26, 2017
The age at which bodychecking is introduced in youth ice hockey does not appear to affect overall risk of injury and concussion, although introducing it at the Pee Wee level (ages 11-12) reduces the risk of injury resulting in more than seven days loss from playing time for Bantam ice hockey players (ages 13-14), found an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)
The age to introduce bodychecking in youth hockey leagues is controversial. To determine whether there is a difference in risk of concussion and injuries from bodychecking at different ages, researchers looked at data from leagues in Alberta, which allow bodychecking at the Pee Wee level, and in Quebec, which introduce the practice at the Bantam level.
The study involved 995 players from 68 Bantam teams in Alberta with two years of bodychecking experience in Pee Wee and 976 players from 62 Quebec teams with no bodychecking experience in Pee Wee. The researchers included all hockey injuries requiring medical attention and/or leading to time loss from hockey.
There were a total of 272 injuries (51) concussions in Alberta during 96 907 player-hours and 244 injuries (49 concussions) in Quebec during 85 464 player-hours. Head and shoulder injuries were the most common in both groups. Previous injuries and concussions were risk factors for future injuries, and first-year players were at higher risk of injury than those in the second year of Bantam.
The risk of all injury and concussion did not differ between a Bantam league where bodychecking was introduced two years earlier in Pee Wee and a league where bodychecking was first introduced in Bantam. The risk of injury resulting in more than seven days' loss from playing time for Bantam ice hockey players however, was reduced by 33% in leagues where bodychecking was introduced two years earlier in Pee Wee.
"These findings need to be interpreted in light of previous evidence of more than a threefold increased risk of concussion and all injury among players aged 11-12 years in a league where bodychecking is permitted," writes Dr. Carolyn Emery, Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Calgary, with coauthors.
"Policy regarding the age at which hockey players are introduced to bodychecking requires further consideration," the authors state. "Consideration should be given also to the age at which a player is able to make an informed decision about playing under these conditions of increased risk, perhaps after they have finished a critical physical growth period that could be focused on skill development."
Link to article
Canadian Medical Association Journal


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URL Injections are used by phishing attackers
URL Injections are used by phishing attackers in applications, emails, instant messages, chat messages, etc. in order to redirect users to their fraudulent phishing pages. The attacker leverages social engineering and the fact that victims believe they are clicking on a legitimate and non-malicious link. The initial URL is usually included as a hyperlink inside an e-mail message, and the victims who receive the e-mail believe they are clicking through to a legitimate website.


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UFO Mystery Solved in Cincinnatiby Erin 04/10/2012 11:11:00 0 comments 2094 Views
For a few days, the strange case of the Cincinnati Lights intrigued UFO fans, but it looks as if the person who took the original video has come up with the likeliest answer: The spooky lights floating through the sky are best explained as skydivers doing a show during a football game at a nearby high school.
The Sept. 28 light show was certainly reminiscent of more celebrated UFO cases, such as the Phoenix Lights of 1997 — but it was also similar to the El Paso Lights of 2010, which were similarly traced to skydivers using pyrotechnics. This time, it was the video shooter (known on YouTube as Galuyasdi) who figured out that a Start Skydiving team was doing a pyro show for La Salle High School's homecoming game at just about the time that the sighting took place. (La Salle lost to Moeller; sorry about that, Lancers.)
Even though this case appears to be solved, echoes of the Cincinnati Lights are still reverberating among UFO fans. It's always harder to track down the likely cause of a UFO sighting than to put up a video and just leave it at that. Hats off to the videographer and fellow investigators who solved their own mystery before it became a full-fledged UFO meme.


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On the Beer Trail: An Epic Beer Tasting in Salt Lake City
Exploring the country, beer by beer.
Editor's Note: Ethan Fixell tours the country as a comedian—and as a beer drinker. Can he sip a local beer in every state? Watch him try. Got a local brewery you want him to check out? Let Ethan know in the comments section.
Though I seem to have somehow inherited Dean Martin's liver, no one else in my immediate family is much of a drinker. So when I took a ski trip with my Dad and brother to Utah, a drop-in at Epic Brewing Company in Salt Lake City wasn't an easy sell. Still, aware of my priorities while touring on the road, my travel companions were willing to make the concession in exchange for my committing to the hotel pullout that night. And unidentifiable stains notwithstanding, sleeping on that terrible cot was totally worth it.
The brewing processes described during our private tour at Epic mostly provided a refresher course for my brother, whom I had dragged to many a brewery before. But my Dad, a financial consultant, seemed especially interested in the output this small but mighty brewery was capable of. He barraged our unflappable guide with questions:
"Hey Ty, how many barrels would you say you produce in a year?"
"How many bottles does a barrel yield, Ty?"
"Ty, what's the amortized profit margin on the value of each hop nugget in any given fiscal quarter?"
It was at this point that Ty suggested we give some of the beer a taste.
For those who have never imbibed in Utah, the state's drinking laws are Draconian, if not insane. With the specific liquor license they were able to obtain (and not easily, might I add), Epic's "Tap-less Tap Room" is the tiniest non-bar I've ever seen, seating only six dining customers at a time: you may only drink if you eat, and you may only have two samples in front of you at any given moment. Thankfully, these tasters cost 40 cents each, permitting patrons to try close to twenty beers if they have the time and patience.
Highlights include Epic's well-balanced Hopulent IPA made with Mosaic hops; their sweet, snappy, Imperial Red Ale; and their rich Smoked and Oaked, a ballsy Belgian style ale with cherrywood smoked malts, aged in bourbon casks for a result that's—surprise!—smoky and oaky. My favorite, though, is their Utah Sage Saison, which, brewed with sage and thyme, is nearly reminiscent of a flavorful gruit.
My blissful tasting was only interrupted when a drunk middle-aged guy and his drunker father stormed the tiny tap room. Apparently, every native Ute has an opinion on how, when, and where to ski. Some are more annoying about it than others.
"DON'T GO TO SNOWBASIN!" shouted Drunk Guy in my ear upon learning of our plans the following day. "YA GOTTA GO TO ALTA. ALTA! ...NOW LET'S DRINK!"
Thankfully, they left quickly when our bartender firmly explained the rules.
"I GOTTA ORDER FOOD?? I'M SO FULL, I COULD S---!" overshared Drunk Guy.
And we were left to enjoy the rest of our samples in peace.
The journey to Epic was a successful one on multiple counts. Back at the hotel, I cracked open a 22 ouncer of their Mid Mountain Mild Ale I had ordered to-go. Before taking my first swig I asked (just to be polite) if anyone else wanted a taste. To my surprise, both my brother and father affirmed yes.
"Is that too much for you?" I asked my Dad after pouring a healthy amount into his hotel room cup.
"Nope," he responded. "I'm into beer."
About the Author: Ethan Fixell is a writer and comedian from New York City best known as one half of comic "dating coach" duo Dave and Ethan. He is also the creator and editor of ActualConversation.com. For more on Ethan, visit EthanFixell.com.
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


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Bosses at the Alamo Drafthouse cinemas have a strict policy against the use of cellphones and they have told the pop superstar she is not welcome at their theatres until she apologises.
Madonna was allegedly scolded for texting during the movie's New York Film Festival screening last week (08Oct13).
Film critic Charles Taylor went public with the story, suggesting Madonna was the "mysterious blonde in black lace gloves who wouldn't stop texting on her Blackberry throughout the first half of the movie".
He added, "Eventually, a woman next to me tapped her on the shoulder and told her to put her phone away, and the blonde hissed back, 'It's for business... ENSLAVER!' I turned to the shoulder tapper and loudly said, 'THANKS!' and gave her a thumbs up. The rest of the movie, I kept thinking about how I wanted to tell the blonde what a disgrace she was.
"During the standing ovation, the blonde ducked out... J. Alexander (actor Jason Alexander) asked, 'Who was that?' Jason then looked down at the floor. His eyes got wide, and he picked up an envelope and showed it to us... And it said: '2 screening tix (sic) MADONNA.'
"Sure enough, we looked to the side of the theater and standing against the wall in black lace gloves was Madonna. The worst person in America."
After hearing about the story, the Alamo's CEO Tim League took to Twitter to ban Madonna from his theatres, writing, "Until she apologizes to movie fans, Madonna is banned from watching movies @drafthouse."
The theatre chain has a strict no-talking and no-texting policy and staff have been known to eject patrons who violate it.


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Pairings with Chef Bill Fuller
Submitted by [email protected] on May 19, 2017
Friday mornings on WYEP, Chef Bill Fuller (Corporate Chef for big Burrito) joins Cindy Howes at 7:30am for Pairings! Bill & Cindy challenge each other to pair up your favorite music with matching menus. Let's see what they came up with this week. Listen to the audio:
- [email protected]'s blog
- Log in to post comments


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Search Constraints
You searched for: Author Ocean Imaging, Corp. Remove constraint Author: Ocean Imaging, Corp. Author Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Remove constraint Author: Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Format Shapefile Remove constraint Format: Shapefile Publisher California. Department of Fish and Game. Marine Resources Region Remove constraint Publisher: California. Department of Fish and Game. Marine Resources Region Subject Remote sensing Remove constraint Subject: Remote sensing Subject Algae Remove constraint Subject: Algae Subject Marine habitats Remove constraint Subject: Marine habitats Subject Kelps Remove constraint Subject: Kelps Institution Stanford Remove constraint Institution: Stanford Place Pacific Ocean Remove constraint Place: Pacific Ocean Year 2009 Remove constraint Year: 2009
1 entry found
Search Results
1. Kelp Canopy: California, 2009
2009. Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, Marine Protected Areas Monitoring Enterprise, Ocean Imaging, Corp., California. Department of Fish and Wildlife, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), and MBC Applied Environmental Sciences. The data for this polygon shapefile was collected and created with the same camera system and processing software as the 2008 survey. Surface and s... California. Department of Fish and Game. Marine Resources Region.


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